UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with Russia's top leaders on Wednesday on his first visit to Russia, one of the five veto powers on the UN Security Council. President-elect Dmitry Medvedev took a firm line in opening talks with Ban, saying "any attempts to solve international problems in violation of UN resolutions, as was in case with Kosovo ... are counterproductive and endanger world stability." The comments were an apparent criticism of what Moscow views as Ban's failure to speak out against Kosovo's independence from Serbia, a long time Russian ally. Ban responded testily to the criticism in later comments to journalists saying he came to Russia hoping for support, "not criticism." "It is now necessary to approach the issue with the understanding of the fact that returning of Kosovo to the status quo is impossible and is impractical," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Ban as saying. "Now it is necessary to search for ways of the complicated situation," he said.
